Clustering and classification

Load the data

Load the data from the MASS package and explore the structure and dimensions

library(dplyr)
## 
## Attaching package: 'dplyr'
## The following objects are masked from 'package:stats':
## 
##     filter, lag
## The following objects are masked from 'package:base':
## 
##     intersect, setdiff, setequal, union
library(ggplot2)
library(MASS)
## 
## Attaching package: 'MASS'
## The following object is masked from 'package:dplyr':
## 
##     select
data("Boston")
str(Boston)
## 'data.frame':    506 obs. of  14 variables:
##  $ crim   : num  0.00632 0.02731 0.02729 0.03237 0.06905 ...
##  $ zn     : num  18 0 0 0 0 0 12.5 12.5 12.5 12.5 ...
##  $ indus  : num  2.31 7.07 7.07 2.18 2.18 2.18 7.87 7.87 7.87 7.87 ...
##  $ chas   : int  0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
##  $ nox    : num  0.538 0.469 0.469 0.458 0.458 0.458 0.524 0.524 0.524 0.524 ...
##  $ rm     : num  6.58 6.42 7.18 7 7.15 ...
##  $ age    : num  65.2 78.9 61.1 45.8 54.2 58.7 66.6 96.1 100 85.9 ...
##  $ dis    : num  4.09 4.97 4.97 6.06 6.06 ...
##  $ rad    : int  1 2 2 3 3 3 5 5 5 5 ...
##  $ tax    : num  296 242 242 222 222 222 311 311 311 311 ...
##  $ ptratio: num  15.3 17.8 17.8 18.7 18.7 18.7 15.2 15.2 15.2 15.2 ...
##  $ black  : num  397 397 393 395 397 ...
##  $ lstat  : num  4.98 9.14 4.03 2.94 5.33 ...
##  $ medv   : num  24 21.6 34.7 33.4 36.2 28.7 22.9 27.1 16.5 18.9 ...
dim(Boston)
## [1] 506  14

The Boston dataset is a data frame with 506 rows and 14 columns. The columns present different housing values in the suburbs of Boston.

Graphical overview of data

pairs(Boston)

summary(Boston)
##       crim                zn             indus            chas        
##  Min.   : 0.00632   Min.   :  0.00   Min.   : 0.46   Min.   :0.00000  
##  1st Qu.: 0.08204   1st Qu.:  0.00   1st Qu.: 5.19   1st Qu.:0.00000  
##  Median : 0.25651   Median :  0.00   Median : 9.69   Median :0.00000  
##  Mean   : 3.61352   Mean   : 11.36   Mean   :11.14   Mean   :0.06917  
##  3rd Qu.: 3.67708   3rd Qu.: 12.50   3rd Qu.:18.10   3rd Qu.:0.00000  
##  Max.   :88.97620   Max.   :100.00   Max.   :27.74   Max.   :1.00000  
##       nox               rm             age              dis        
##  Min.   :0.3850   Min.   :3.561   Min.   :  2.90   Min.   : 1.130  
##  1st Qu.:0.4490   1st Qu.:5.886   1st Qu.: 45.02   1st Qu.: 2.100  
##  Median :0.5380   Median :6.208   Median : 77.50   Median : 3.207  
##  Mean   :0.5547   Mean   :6.285   Mean   : 68.57   Mean   : 3.795  
##  3rd Qu.:0.6240   3rd Qu.:6.623   3rd Qu.: 94.08   3rd Qu.: 5.188  
##  Max.   :0.8710   Max.   :8.780   Max.   :100.00   Max.   :12.127  
##       rad              tax           ptratio          black       
##  Min.   : 1.000   Min.   :187.0   Min.   :12.60   Min.   :  0.32  
##  1st Qu.: 4.000   1st Qu.:279.0   1st Qu.:17.40   1st Qu.:375.38  
##  Median : 5.000   Median :330.0   Median :19.05   Median :391.44  
##  Mean   : 9.549   Mean   :408.2   Mean   :18.46   Mean   :356.67  
##  3rd Qu.:24.000   3rd Qu.:666.0   3rd Qu.:20.20   3rd Qu.:396.23  
##  Max.   :24.000   Max.   :711.0   Max.   :22.00   Max.   :396.90  
##      lstat            medv      
##  Min.   : 1.73   Min.   : 5.00  
##  1st Qu.: 6.95   1st Qu.:17.02  
##  Median :11.36   Median :21.20  
##  Mean   :12.65   Mean   :22.53  
##  3rd Qu.:16.95   3rd Qu.:25.00  
##  Max.   :37.97   Max.   :50.00

There’s both continuous and binary variables in the data. Some of the varibles are highly correlated, either negatively, such as lower status of the population (lstat) and median value of owner-occupied homes in $1000 (medv), or positively, such as full-value property-tax rate per $10,000 (tax) and proportion of non-retail business acres per town (indus).
However, they are not all normally distributed or have the same variance which are the assumptions for LDA. So we need to scale the variables.

Standardization and categorize the crime rate

We scale the values to have a mean of 0 and standard deviation of 1.

boston_scaled <- scale(Boston)
boston_scaled <- as.data.frame(boston_scaled)
apply(boston_scaled,2, sd, na.rm=TRUE)
##    crim      zn   indus    chas     nox      rm     age     dis     rad 
##       1       1       1       1       1       1       1       1       1 
##     tax ptratio   black   lstat    medv 
##       1       1       1       1       1
summary(boston_scaled)
##       crim                 zn               indus        
##  Min.   :-0.419367   Min.   :-0.48724   Min.   :-1.5563  
##  1st Qu.:-0.410563   1st Qu.:-0.48724   1st Qu.:-0.8668  
##  Median :-0.390280   Median :-0.48724   Median :-0.2109  
##  Mean   : 0.000000   Mean   : 0.00000   Mean   : 0.0000  
##  3rd Qu.: 0.007389   3rd Qu.: 0.04872   3rd Qu.: 1.0150  
##  Max.   : 9.924110   Max.   : 3.80047   Max.   : 2.4202  
##       chas              nox                rm               age         
##  Min.   :-0.2723   Min.   :-1.4644   Min.   :-3.8764   Min.   :-2.3331  
##  1st Qu.:-0.2723   1st Qu.:-0.9121   1st Qu.:-0.5681   1st Qu.:-0.8366  
##  Median :-0.2723   Median :-0.1441   Median :-0.1084   Median : 0.3171  
##  Mean   : 0.0000   Mean   : 0.0000   Mean   : 0.0000   Mean   : 0.0000  
##  3rd Qu.:-0.2723   3rd Qu.: 0.5981   3rd Qu.: 0.4823   3rd Qu.: 0.9059  
##  Max.   : 3.6648   Max.   : 2.7296   Max.   : 3.5515   Max.   : 1.1164  
##       dis               rad               tax             ptratio       
##  Min.   :-1.2658   Min.   :-0.9819   Min.   :-1.3127   Min.   :-2.7047  
##  1st Qu.:-0.8049   1st Qu.:-0.6373   1st Qu.:-0.7668   1st Qu.:-0.4876  
##  Median :-0.2790   Median :-0.5225   Median :-0.4642   Median : 0.2746  
##  Mean   : 0.0000   Mean   : 0.0000   Mean   : 0.0000   Mean   : 0.0000  
##  3rd Qu.: 0.6617   3rd Qu.: 1.6596   3rd Qu.: 1.5294   3rd Qu.: 0.8058  
##  Max.   : 3.9566   Max.   : 1.6596   Max.   : 1.7964   Max.   : 1.6372  
##      black             lstat              medv        
##  Min.   :-3.9033   Min.   :-1.5296   Min.   :-1.9063  
##  1st Qu.: 0.2049   1st Qu.:-0.7986   1st Qu.:-0.5989  
##  Median : 0.3808   Median :-0.1811   Median :-0.1449  
##  Mean   : 0.0000   Mean   : 0.0000   Mean   : 0.0000  
##  3rd Qu.: 0.4332   3rd Qu.: 0.6024   3rd Qu.: 0.2683  
##  Max.   : 0.4406   Max.   : 3.5453   Max.   : 2.9865

Then we use the quantile function to break the crime rates to 4 bins and categorize the crime rates to 4 different categories. Then we remove the original crime rate variuable and substitute it with the new categorial variables.

bins <- quantile(boston_scaled$crim)
crime <- cut(boston_scaled$crim, breaks = bins, include.lowest = TRUE, labels = c("low", "med_low", "med_high", "high"))
boston_scaled <- dplyr::select(boston_scaled, -crim)
boston_scaled <- data.frame(boston_scaled, crime)

After that we divide the data to test and train sets, with 80 % of the data going to train set. We also save the correct classes from the test set and remove the crime variable from it.

n <- nrow(boston_scaled)
ind <- sample(n,  size = n * 0.8)
train <- boston_scaled[ind,]
test <- boston_scaled[-ind,]

Linear discriminant analysis

lda.fit <- lda(crime~., data=train)
classes <- as.numeric(train$crime)
plot(lda.fit, dimen=2, col=classes)

Predictions from the LDA

First we save the correct classess in the test set and remove it from the data. Then we predict the crime rate in the test set using the model from ther train set and cross-tabulate it with the correct classes.

correct_classes <- test$crime
test <- dplyr::select(test, -crime)
lda.pred <- predict(lda.fit, newdata=test)
table(correct = correct_classes, predicted = lda.pred$class)
##           predicted
## correct    low med_low med_high high
##   low       15       9        1    0
##   med_low    4      12        2    0
##   med_high   0      14       15    0
##   high       0       0        1   29

The model predicted quite well the crime categories. Probably with fewer classes, e.g. 3, the result would have been even better.

Euclidean distance and k-means clustering

data("Boston")
boston_scaled <- scale(Boston)
boston_euk_dist <- dist(boston_scaled)

Then we can run the k-means clustering with 3 clusters and visualise the result with few relevant variables.

km <-kmeans(boston_scaled, centers = 3)
pairs(boston_scaled[,6:10], col = km$cluster)

It seems that 3 clusters might not be the best, so we can investigate the optimal number of clusters.

set.seed(123)

k_max <- 10
twcss <- sapply(1:k_max, function(k){kmeans(boston_scaled, k)$tot.withinss})
qplot(x = 1:k_max, y = twcss, geom = 'line')

It seems that 2 is the most optimal number of clusters, so let’s visualise that on the same variables.

km <-kmeans(boston_scaled, centers = 2)
pairs(boston_scaled[,6:10], col = km$cluster)

Looks better.